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PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: Lot of Lots of Lost Uses
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PHILAPHILIA Empty Lot of the Week: Lot of Lots of Lost Uses
A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena around Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
Northwest corner of 23rd and Walnut -- Does this count as an Empty Lot? It's an active surface parking lot for a 24-hour Rite Aid. Well, of course it does. This dense and well-used part of the city shouldn't have a crappy pharmacy's surface lot occupying valuable-ass land like this. The strange thing about this lot is that it can't make up its damn mind. This piece of fuck has gone through so many uses that it's going to be hard to list them all. One of the fun things about this lot is how it's actually part of the Walnut Street Bridge. It's built up from the ground to the bridge's level.
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| That stairway is from the first Walnut Street Bridge, 1888-1893. |
This lot existed as a bunch of trees and shit all the way up into the mid 19th Century. At that time, the area near the Walnut Street Wharf on the Schuylkill River became something of a Marble Works district. A whole slew of different marble companies had yards in all the surrounding blocks and this lot was no different. The marble yard at the northwest corner of 23rd and Walnut lasted a little longer than the others, eventually becoming a wood mill as the rowhouses that still exist down the street were being built.
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The Allison Manufactory Wood Mill at the lot in 1888. Image from PhillyHistory.org, a project of the Department of Public Records. |
In 1893, right as the first Walnut Street Bridge was being finished, large rowhouses were also built at the new and slightly higher street level created by the new bridge. Those houses filled the block but didn't stick around for long ... all because of one famous-ass Mega-Philadelphian.
John Wanamaker wasn't just a department store guru to end all department store gurus, he was also a pious Presbyterian who started the Bethany Sunday School at 23rd and Pine for the Bethany Collegiate Presbyterian Church when he was a young man in 1858. He often told stories about how he got his ass beat by gangs in the neighborhood who at one point took over his Sunday School building.
Undeterred, Wanamaker continued Sunday School instruction to much praise, sometimes getting 2,000 people showing up for the class at one time. Wanamaker wanted to take it one step further, so in 1888 he helped start a college in the basement of the school called Bethany College. The college was originally targeted toward members of the congregation but the place became so popular that people applied for enrollment from all over the country. The college was forced to keep moving into larger and larger buildings.
What does this have to do with this crappy empty lot? Well, the third home of Bethany College would be paid for by John Wanamaker and built at the site of this lot shortly after 1900. On April 9, 1908, the college became a chartered nonprofit and changed its name to the Wanamaker Institute of Industries.
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The Institute in 1924. Image from PhillyHistory.org, a project of the Department of Public Records. |
The college stuck around at this location until 1937, when the building was sold and the Wanamaker Institute partnered with the School District of Philadelphia. The Institute still exists today, based in Drexel Hill and is partnered with the Community College of Philadelphia. After that, the lot started acquiring some of its surfacy qualities: a gas station would inhabit the lot for the next six decades.
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A piece of the old college building still stood there for quite a while. Image from PhillyHistory.org, a project of the Department of Public Records. |
Fast forward to the recent past. The lot was purchased by the fuckbirds at Patriot Parking in October of 1995 for the whoppingly high price of $2 (no shady dealing there) and the 24-hour Rite Aid Parking Garage opened in June of 1996. Ever since, the corner of 23rd and Walnut has been infected by the surface lot of that development -- one that should never exist.
I mean, really, a building finally replaces the gas station that's been there for decades, and it's a fucking retail site set back from the street with an underground parking garage? Why a surface lot if there's a parking garage attached to the building? I guess that garage is for monthly spaces and the surface lot is for customers, but still ... this is bullshit.
Since this site has been prone to change since its inception, I can only assume that this stupid lot will one day get filled by an actual building. The site is zoned C-4, so there would be much less red tape for a skyscraper here. Patriot Parking, get your fucking shit in a pile and sell this crappy property to someone who'll do something proper with it... it doesn't even need to be a skyscraper. I'd settle for a three-story Anus Museum made of solid rock. Fuck.
This story might have had some merit if it were not for all the cursing in it.
Keep your crappy attitude to yourself, no one wants to hear or read it. Nor does it help make your point.
CLEAN IT UP!— FocusTruthFully- Thank you for your concern. — GroJLart
- History is super fun, but it's more fun with swearing.— orangechickenorange
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